Lunch: $20.00 for members ** Be Sure to Bring Your 2015-2016 Membership Dues!**

Luncheon Talks:

A Case History of Andrews Field, Louisiana

By:

Steve Anderson

Abstract:

The Andrew Field area is a puzzle, wrapped in an enigma, surrounded by mystery. The area is six miles west of Maurice Louisiana and the major Upper Frio biostratigraphic zones are Camerina, Miogypsinoides, and Cibicides hazzardi (Marg. tex.). The Andrew area is an Upper Frio Slope Sandstone according to GRI. The area was initially drilled deep by Arco and Amerada, the wells had massive Cib. haz. (Marg tex) sand wet and the offsets had no sand. Based on 2D data, it was interpreted to be very complex stratrigraphically. My opinion is the area is complexly faulted with the no sand wells faulted out. The first production in Andrew was in the Marginulina howei sands. A deep well, the Amerada Hunter No 1 had shows in the Camerina 1 and 2 sands, pay in the Miogypsinoides, Marg. tex., and apparent pay in the Marg howei. So our friends at Amerada completed the well in the Marg. tex. with what looks to be sixty feet of pay. The well only produced 0.2 BCF, the well was re-completed to the Miogypsinoides which produced a measly .03 BCF. By this time the lease block fell into the hands of Jack Barry and Bob Hargrave, an independent geologist and landman, who brought a Camerina deal to Quintana. QPC drilled three productive wells which would cum. about 30 BCF from the Camerina 1 and 2 sands.

In 1993, the Quintana Camerina production was sold to Burlington. The best well was the Quintana Annie Mae Simon which was completed in the Camerina 1 sand as this sand’s unit covered more area. The Camerina 2 sand was to be produced later with a selective completion and plugged off. After the Simon well produced for 20 years, it was reasoned that a new well should be drilled rather trying to go back down the hole. The Burlington Annie Mae Simone 2 blew out and was plugged in July 2005. The drilling in this area is hampered by the pore pressure and frac gradient being very close so when increasing mud weight, the hole starts taking mud. Then the mud weight is decreased, the well tends to flow. Burlington sold the reserves to Walter Oil and Gas. Walter drilled the Annie Mae Simon No 1 in August 2005.

In 1998, Fairfield Resources shot a speculative 3D. Several prospects were identified but with the changing economics, Fairfield dropped out. The Reef Lucy Thomas 1 was drilled and productive in the Camerina 2 which appears to have an amplitude anomaly associated with production. The Lucy Thomas No 1 was drilled with the 3D data. The production in the Camerina 2, in the Walter Annie Mae Simon No 1 is also associated with an amplitude anomaly.

Arb lines from the 3D will be shown, to explain the progression of drilling and production. The Andrew area has big reserve potential in the deeper section which can be tapped once the current 3D is reprocessed and merged to image the deep Cib. haz (Marg. tex.) section.

Steve Anderson Bio:

Biography of Steven S. Anderson

Steve moved to Lafayette in July, 1975 when the bars did not close and Judge Roy Bean’s was the best pick up place in the South. It was rumored even geologists could pick up girls there. His first company was Union Oil of California. Coming off the training program, work was to interpret “spec” 2D data for Gulf of Mexico area wide lease sales as an exploration geophysicist. Steve worked W.C. Block 536 in which Union-Texaco bid $106 million for a 5000 acre tract. In 1981 Steve left Union Oil, to join Ada Exco, a small dysfunctional independent concentrating on onshore Louisiana. After one year, Steve joined Quintana Petroleum. During the “bust years” of 1985-1989, Quintana was one of South Louisiana’s most active drilling companies. Quintana took outside deals as well as internally generated prospects. Quintana made discoveries in Andrew, Wright, West Lake Arthur, Maurice, Orange Grove, Lyons Point and Bayou Sauveur. Steve joined Flores and Rucks in 1992, as a consultant and Exploration Manager from 1994-1996. After leaving Flores and Rucks, he has worked as a consultant with Rozel, Petroquest, Petsec, Mandalay, and many other small companies in Lafayette. He has had discoveries in Riceville, Andrew, Cossenade and is currently working in Section 28 Field with five productive wells with Termo and Penta Resources. He has recently consulting for DEEP, a Houston start-up company.

Steve is a 1975 graduate of Colorado School of Mines in geophysical engineering. He was a professional engineer in Colorado. He attended USL (now ULL) and completed all the course work for a masters in geology.

The deep water Gulf of Mexico play is a classic textbook example of an opportunity that simply would not exist without constant technical innovation. Variations of this talk have been used to explain our industry to people without any science background; for this Distinguished Lecture series it has been modified to be more suitable for earth scientist audience that is perhaps more familiar with the production environment than with “big-E” Exploration.

The deep water Gulf of Mexico play is a classic textbook example of an opportunity that simply would not exist without constant technical innovation. Variations of this talk have been used to explain our industry to people without any science background; for this Distinguished Lecture series it has been modified to be more suitable for earth scientist audience that is perhaps more familiar with the production environment than with “big-E” Exploration.

Bio:

Barney’s academic work at the University of Arizona emphasized hard-rock (mineral) geophysics, planetary science, and tectonophysics, so he entered the oil industry with few preconceptions beyond the Wave Equation. In 3+ decades with Chevron, he has witnessed and helped to nurture the emergence of 3D seismic data, depth imaging (first post-stack, then pre-stack), earth modeling, and visualization. Barney actually does play a geophysicist on TV, appearing in the Chevron “We Agree” ad campaign, as well as representing Chevron (and, by extension, our industry) in interviews with NBC Today, ABC 20/20, PBS Nightly Business Report, CNN, Fox News, NPR All Things Considered, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Houston Chronicle, Contra Costa Times, Newsweek, Forbes, Wired, and MIT Technology Review.

Juan M. Lorenzo graduated as a geologist from the University of Barcelona in 1983. The following year he came to the US as a Fulbright student and concentrated on Marine Seismology for his Ph.D. (1991) dissertation at Columbia University. Since then he has participated in 7 marine geophysical and drilling cruises and led two land-based seismic experiments in central and northern Chile: in 2001, 2007-8.
Currently he uses land- and laboratory-based seismic experiments to research physics models for unsaturated soils (New Orleans levees), the dynamics of shallow faulting (Gulf Coast of Mexico), and microearthquake source mechanics of crack-fault interactions.

Lunch: $20.00 for members ** Be Sure to Bring Your 2015-2016 Membership Dues!**

Luncheon Talks:

Development and distribution of Salt Keels in the Deepwater Northern Gulf of Mexico

By Carl Fiduk

The development and distribution of salt keels projecting below the base of allochthonous salt as observed on modern 3-D seismic data in the deep Northern Gulf of Mexico is not random. Although keels may form by several different processes, a suite of keels which form due to extension of sub canopy sediments on a detachment within Oligocene-to-Eocene strata have a unique profile and distinct location. Regional mapping of the base of the salt canopy reveals that keels of this type are found parallel to, but offset shelfward (updip) from the present day Sigsbee Escarpment. This relationship holds across all of Keathley Canyon OCS area and into the Alaminos Canyon OCS area. Keels formed by other processes do not show this unique pattern.

The distanced between keel structures and the Sigsbee Escarpment varies from 10-30 km. The keel structure itself is not a single discrete feature but a series of linked shorter keels. Linkage style between keels appears similar to that for growth faults (relays). The location for detachment initiation and the orientation of individual keels can change markedly between salt lobes comprising the allochthonous canopy. The location for detachment initiation is often found in close relationship with deeper salt structures. Sparse well data indicate that the timing for displacement, which occurred after emplacement of the shallow canopy, is Plio-Pleistocene and therefore geologically quite recent. I speculate that the location where displacement initiates is structurally controlled and has relationships to deeper salt features and flexure points caused by updip crustal loading.

Author Bio:

Dr. Joseph Carl Fiduk

Carl Fiduk graduated with a B.S. (1979) and an M.S. (1982) in Geology, both from the University of Florida. He later received his M.B.A (1985) degree from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and his Ph. D. in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Texas in Austin (1994). He has worked for the USGS, Gulf Oil, Discovery Logging, the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, British Petroleum, Texas A&M University, the University of Colorado, CGG, CGGVeritas, WesternGeco/Schlumberger and as a private consultant. His research interests cover sedimentology, coastal and shelf clastic deposition, salt structural deformation and evolution, basin analysis, shelf margin to deep marine depositional processes, petroleum systems analysis, and the use of three-dimensional time and depth data in petroleum exploration. He is currently involved salt-sediment interaction research in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, fluvial deltaic deposition in the Cretaceous Seaway of NW Colorado, and deep marine stratigraphic analysis in the Gulf of Mexico. Carl is presently Senior Geophysicist for Freeport McMoran O&G working in Houston, TX. In 30+ years as a working geoscientist he has published over 80 peer-reviewed abstracts and papers.

Fluid compositions evolve during migration through geologic media. While there have been previous studies documenting fluid compositional changes between reservoirs and the surface, understanding alteration is difficult with limited sampling separated by kilometers of geologic media. Lab experiments, numerical simulations, and core studies have concluded that a wide range of processes influence light hydrocarbon and CO2 compositions (sorption, diffusion, oxidation, mixing, and solubility effects). Yet, identifying these processes in the field remains elusive without extensive geologic characterization and fluid sampling in overburden intervals.

This research evaluated light hydrocarbon geochemical compositions in the near-surface, overburden, and reservoir intervals at three CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2-EOR) sites along the Gulf Coast. At site A, high concentrations of CO2 and CH4 were observed in soil gas adjacent to a producing well. However, a variety of geochemical parameters (radiocarbon, methane stable isotopes) indicated natural microbial formation rather than well leakage. A work flow is presented to attribute fluid sources for future leakage accusations from CO2-EOR or shale gas operations.

At site B, natural hydrocarbon seepage to the surface was documented before initial field production. Geochemical changes during migration will be compared with numerical simulations of alteration processes. High concentrations of groundwater methane are observed at site C, and further data collection is proposed to understand fluid sources. Given that buoyancy-driven fluid migration through earth materials is relevant to numerous applied disciplines, numerical models and fluid source attribution methods proposed in this research are designed to be adapted to other environmental and industrial problems.

Biography

Jacob Anderson has worked on a wide range of geoscience and engineering problems in industry, academia, and a non-profit organization. He received a bachelor’s of science in Petroleum Engineering from LSU and completed undergraduate internships at ExxonMobil and BP. After graduation, he worked as a petrophysical engineer on deepwater Gulf of Mexico projects for Shell. However, Jacob left the oil and gas industry to volunteer for a year on potable water projects in South America with Engineers without Borders. After returning to the US, Jacob received a master’s degree in Geology at Boston College. His MS thesis addressed groundwater contamination in a public water supply wellfield.

Jacob is currently pursuing a PhD in Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is funded through Carbon, Capture, & Storage projects in collaboration with the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology. Jacob’s PhD research investigates hydrocarbon geochemical changes during upward migration. Results of his work have implications for Carbon, Capture, & Storage and the oil & gas industry.

The multi-attribute rotation scheme (MARS) is a methodology that uses a numerical solution to estimate a transform to predict petrophysical properties from elastic attributes. This is achieved by estimating a new attribute in the direction of maximum change of a target property in an n-dimensional Euclidean space formed by n-number of attributes, and subsequent scaling of this attribute to the target unit properties. The transform is computed from well-log-derived elastic attributes and petrophysical properties, and posteriorly applied to seismically-derived elastic attributes. Such transforms can be used to estimate reservoir property volumes for reservoir characterization and delineation in exploration and production settings, and to estimate secondary variables in geostatistical workflows for static model generation and reserve estimation. To illustrate the methodology, MARS was applied to estimate a transform to predict water saturation and total porosity from elastic attributes in a well located in the Barents Sea, as well as, to estimate a water saturation volume in a mud-rich turbidite gas reservoir located onshore Colombia.

SPEAKER BIO:

Pedro Alvarez holds a B.S. degree in Geophysical Engineering from Universidad Central de Venezuela (2002), ranking first in his class. He holds an M.S. degree in Petroleum Geophysics, from Instituto Superior de la Energia/Heriot-Watt University (2007). He worked for eight year as Seismic Interpreter and Reservoir Geophysicist for PDVSA focusing in structural and quantitative seismic interpretation of clastic and carbonate reservoirs. Since 2012 he has been working for RSI, where he currently has the position of Team Lead/Sr. QI Geoscientist. In this position his main responsibility is the quantitative interpretation of post-stack, AVO, seismic inversion and CSEM attributes using a geological, geostatistical and rock physics framework. He has experience working in projects from Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, USA, Australia, Falkland Island, Middle-East and Norway. He is member of the SEG, AAPG and EAGE.

Hello Everybody, With the outside temperatures becoming bearable, the need for mowing the lawn each week slowing down, the first part of the Louisiana elections and the GCAGS, SEG, and GSA meetings behind us (and at the same time coming up – see below), and close to the end of yet another uneventful hurricane season in the Gulf – it seems like a great winter is ahead of us!

Our October luncheon speaker, Morgan Brown from Tenax Geoscience, drew a large crowd talking about seismic velocity anisotropy in real rocks and how taking anisotropy into account – although mathematically more challenging – will yield more accurate images and seismic attributes. Just like the first talk in our season by SEG Honorary Lecturer Dan Whitmore, this was a very well delivered and received talk. Now we are looking forward to Pedro Alvarez from Rock Solid Images to enlightening us about MARS, a tool for reservoir property prediction, with some theory and two real-life example to illustrate the method.

I just made travel arrangements to attend the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union December 14-18 in San Francisco, the biggest meeting in the Earth and Space Sciences with nearly 24,000 attendees expected. It is very exciting because it brings together the entire Earth and space sciences community for discussions of emerging trends and the latest research. I know that I’ll return inspired to UL with knowledge and ideas I can’t get anywhere else, hoping that I can find the time and energy to turn the ideas into action – considering the many hats that I am wearing and the commitments I already have.

In the past, our society has suffered from the lack of volunteers interested in serving on the board and making SWGLS happen. We have turned this around last year and invigorated the active participation in our society. However, we need to keep the momentum up and – as always – we are now actively looking for new board members for the 2016/2017 season.

In closing I would like to thank Freeport McMoRan again for sponsoring our UL geology students in October. They are always hungry for good food and a good talk. See you at the meeting!

Lunch: $20.00 for members ** Be Sure to Bring Your 2015-2016 Membership Dues!**

Luncheon Talks:

Opening the Black Box of Anisotropic Seismic Processing

Dr. Morgan Brown

Tenax Geoscience

Abstract

Seismic velocity anisotropy (simply “anisotropy” for short) is ubiquitous in real rocks. Finally, modern seismic surveys have the necessary sampling to resolve anisotropic earth models, which in turn yield more accurate images and seismic attributes. Unfortunately, the “over-mathematization” of anisotropy concepts leaves the average geophysicist without an intuitive grasp of their importance for real-world prospecting. In this presentation, I seek to arm the geophysicist with enough basic anisotropy IQ to confidently take advantage of the potentially powerful anisotropic imaging and analysis products available on the marketplace…as well as avoid common pitfalls and misconceptions. I first illustrate basic anisotropy concepts in a “math-lite” fashion, then describe the many ways in which (ignored) anisotropy can degrade seismic imaging and interpretation. Finally, I provide a realistic framework for assessing the applicability of azimuthal anisotropy to infer natural fractures.

Biography

Dr. Morgan Brown holds degrees in applied mathematics (BA, 1997) from Rice University and in geophysics (PhD, 2004) from Stanford University. He worked in geophysical R&D at Hess Oil and 3DGeo, before joining Joe Higginbotham at Wave Imaging Technology. He served as CEO from 2008 to the company’s sale in 2013 to GeoCenter. In 2014, Dr. Brown formed Tenax Geoscience, a geoscience consultancy and specialty seismic processing company.